Business Urged To Help Train Work Force

Study Says Business, Too, Has Responsibility To Educate Work Force

All the talk about the mismatch between the skills people entering the work force have and the skills employers need seems basic enough.

The nation's schools seem unable to produce people with the skills businesses will need to remain competitive in the decade ahead.

Looking at demographic trends, many experts predict a severe shortage of workers for high-skill jobs. They say the shortage will be worsened by an influx of minority and immigrant workers, many with limited skills.

But Larry Mishel, research director for the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, doesn't buy it. He disputes the conventional reading of the demographic data -- accepted by many as gospel since the often-quoted Workforce 2000 study was released in 1987.

That study says that by the end of the 1990s, white men will make up just 15 percent of new entrants to the work force.

But Mishel maintains that commission reports and studies putting the blame on the schools examine only part of the problem. Employers and businesses must shoulder part of the blame themselves, he writes in a new study, "The Myth of the Coming Labor Shortage."

Mishel and his co-author, Ruy A. Teixeira, argue that American companies' slowness in implementing revolutionary changes in management have left them playing catch-up to competitors in Western Europe and Japan. They say that has meant many workers here find themselves in lower-skilled and lower-paying jobs, not the predicted opposite. "The problem is in the types of jobs available, not the workers available," Mishel said. "There are several things wrong with a strategy that relies solely on the supply-side push, on getting a better work force. It leaves out what are we going to do to get more employers to adopt these systems."

Progressive management systems break down the traditional corporate hierarchy, encouraging workers to make suggestions, work in teams and solve problems. Some American companies have been successful in implementing new methods, but others aren't yet ready

for the change.

Mishel and Teixeira agree there is a need to improve the nation's schools. But they say businesses must change their approach as well.

"Education is not about just preparation for work," Mishel said. "It is about preparing our citizenry. The problem is the pretense that if we are going to get schools to do better -- as they should -- that will be sufficient."

To make his case, Mishel points to the July report by the secretary of labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. That study said half of America's students are poorly prepared for the workplace and recommended setting new standards of competence in a variety of basic skills, as well as in the skills of mastering technology, communicating and creative thinking. The idea is to make sure today's students have the skills needed by tomorrow's employers. But Mishel sees his study as a sort of flip side to the federal report. He and Teixeira say the demographic changes ahead have been exaggerated, in part because white workers -- male and female -- will still dominate the work force and white women generally have education levels comparable to white men's.

But the authors make many of the same points as the federal commission on the need to improve basic skills and emphasize training for students who aren't college-bound.

Though the Economic Policy Institute study says business must share responsibility for those problems, Mishel offers no easy answers. He ackowledged that businesses are slow to change until it is economically necessary.

Mishel said the federal government can spur change by improving the lot of workers -- increasing the minimum wage, for example, and strengthening labor laws. That way companies would have a greater incentive to make better use of their workers.

Peter Barth, an economics professor at the University of Connecticut, agreed that companies are slow to change, but said American schools still bear the primary responsibility of preparing the next generation of workers.

"I don't think we should do anything at all to encourage the public school systems to be off the hook in providing important educational tools to young people," Barth said.

The professor said global economic trends will force the hand of many American companies if they want to stay competitive. Those that prosper will make use of available technologies and the most productive management styles.

"The ones that will benefit will have both the profits and the incentive to stay ahead of everybody else," Barth said.